be gone. There hadn’t been an incident in Lania for the last two years, and before that, there had only been a few minor protests.
Number three…why was I so damn furious right now that numbers one and two were apparently bullshit?
If there was any rebel activity, we damn well should have known about it.
I looked at my younger brother Jax, and I could tell he was feeling the same way I was at the moment, even though you’d never know it by looking at his face. However, I knew my brother, and there were always a few small tells he couldn’t hide from me that clued me into exactly how he was reacting.
My youngest brother, Cooper, had decided to stay in Seattle for a few weeks to connect with some old college buddies. But if he were here, I knew he’d feel the same outrage Jax and I were experiencing right now.
Goddammit! This shouldn’t be happening.
But it was, which is exactly why I’d called in the third person in the room.
I turned my gaze to Marshall, the leader of the volunteer rescue task force that was simply known as Last Hope, and tried to gauge his position.
Jax and I had put in an urgent call to Marshall the moment we’d heard about the kidnapping. As usual, he’d showed up within a few hours with all the relevant information needed to try to perform a rescue attempt.
Unlike Jax, the former Commander Marshall was really hard to read. His calm demeanor under pressure, and kick-ass skill as a previous leader of one of the Navy SEAL teams was legendary. So it wasn’t all that surprising that I didn’t have a clue what the older man was thinking, even though my brothers and I had worked alongside the guy for years to get Last Hope to where it was today.
Marshall was an enigma to almost everyone who volunteered for Last Hope. All we really knew is that he’d been injured during a mission while he was active military, which had forced him into retirement earlier than he’d planned.
Jax, Cooper and I had jumped on board with Marshall soon after we’d all left our own Special Forces units, and the military, to take our places as the owners of Montgomery Mining. We’d wanted to help Marshall grow Last Hope, and we had.
In the beginning, my brothers and I had carried out a lot of the rescues ourselves, but Marshall now had way more volunteers than he actually needed for that. Younger guys who were fresh out of special ops.
One of the most important reasons we tried to stay out of doing rescues ourselves was because all our faces had become more and more recognizable since we’d left the military. The press chased Jax the most. I tried to keep a low profile, and so did Cooper, but there were times we couldn’t avoid photos, either. Once we’d returned to the civilian world, and put Montgomery Mining back at the top, everybody had wanted a photo of the billionaire bachelor Montgomery brothers.
It had gotten too damn risky for us to be on the front line.
Now, we were much more valuable providing resources and working on the strategic planning—most of the time.
Marshall lifted a brow. “Obviously, the federal government is treading lightly on this one now that we’re friend rather than foe to Lania, and everyone has kissed and made up during the last couple of years. They don’t want to rock the boat, and any Lanian rebels are considered terrorists. You boys definitely know the U.S. government’s position on negotiating ransom with presumed terrorists. They sent in the FBI to assist with the negotiations for Harlow, but Montgomery Mining ultimately was the one who paid the ransom for her release. Any attempted rescue for Taylor, if it happens, would need to be completely covert, and we’re on our own.”
Fuck! Yeah, I knew that. All of the cases we handled were situations that the federal government didn’t want to, or wouldn’t, take any action on. However, it was a hell of a lot easier to pull out captives when we weren’t tiptoeing around politics.
I turned to our lone released hostage again. She’d already told us her story, but as expected from anyone who had been a captive, it had been slightly scattered. I had to make damn sure I was up to speed since I’d only found out about this entire situation a few hours ago. Having the woman show up at Montgomery Mining headquarters not